The crime scene was grisly: Blood was splattered on the windshield, hood and front fender of Michael Razzio Simmons' car, and a young man lay dead across the street with stab wounds to the neck.
But the reason Simmons gave for the altercation that left Patrick John Walker, 23, dead on a Bel Air street Friday afternoon, was equally disturbing. Simmons told police Walker had cut him off in traffic.
Yesterday, about 200 of Walker's family and friends gathered at St. Margaret Roman Catholic Church in Bel Air to mourn, recalling the recent college graduate as a quiet man who cared about others and led a simple life.
"Putting Pat and violence in the same sentence is incomprehensible," said his aunt, Barbara Murray. "If ever there was a kind, gentle, peace-loving soul, it was Pat."
The incident has cast a fresh spotlight on road rage, an extreme form of aggressive driving often attributed to congestion and lengthy commutes on slow-moving urban thoroughfares. Yet Walker's killing happened on a sleepy side street in downtown Bel Air, a community that has not seen a homicide in more than 20 years.
"There are more drivers, more congestion, more distractions, and, if anything, we seem to be, as a society, more rude today than 10 years ago," said Peter Kissinger, president of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Incidents of road rage across the nation have led to drivers shooting each other or driving each other into fatal accidents. Researchers say the incidents can be curbed by exhibiting better road manners, but largely have to do with the psyche of those committing the acts.
A 1997 study commissioned by the AAA foundation examined more than 10,000 violent aggressive driving incidents nationwide and found that the majority of the aggressors were young males with criminal records. But hundreds of other motorists who committed violence were successful men and women without known histories of crime, violence, or alcohol or drug abuse.
Conversely, the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration analyzed driving records of 300 people who had been ordered by a judge to attend classes at Stephen Stosny's Germantown center for resolving family violence. The study found that more than two-thirds of them had several aggressive driving violations.
